tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post6961040533187273036..comments2016-08-22T08:52:11.001-04:00Comments on Quintessence of Dust: Signature in the Cell: Chapter 8Stephen Mathesonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05057004085073574659noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-89807337431669635302010-04-25T12:10:07.932-04:002010-04-25T12:10:07.932-04:00Dembski&#39;s argument about improbability adds no...Dembski&#39;s argument about improbability adds nothing of interest that is new to probabilists or statisticians. He uses the concept of &quot;specified information&quot; which he himself attributes to Leslie Orgel.<br /><br />Actually Dembski&#39;s argument works roughly like this:<br /><br /># The adaptations are so good that they cannot have arisen by pure random processes (such as mutation unaccompanied by natural selection)<br /><i>(Most of us would hardly disagree with this)</i><br /><br /># So you need some process such as design or natural selection to explain them. <i>(Again, uncontroversial)</i><br /><br /># Dembski&#39;s Law of Conservation of Complex Specified Information shows that natural selection cannot increase adaptation, so it must be design.<br /><br />This last point is completely wrong. The LCCSI is both irrelevant to that point, <i>and</i> it is not proven!<br /><br />For a more complete discussion see <a href="http://ncse.com/rncse/27/3-4/has-natural-selection-been-refuted-arguments-william-dembski" rel="nofollow">my article</a> on all this in Reports of the National Center for Science Education, 2007. I think you will find it clear.<br /><br />What Dembski&#39;s design detector does do is detect design-or-natural-selection by showing that pure mutation couldn&#39;t do it.<br /><br />Meyer&#39;s book does not address the (devastating) criticisms of Dembski&#39;s work, and only invokes it to argue about the origin of life. Does Meyer say that Dembski&#39;s arguments prevent natural selection from bringing about adaptation <i>after</i> of origin of life?Joe Felsensteinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06359126552631140000noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-40118467440881104252010-04-22T19:51:41.952-04:002010-04-22T19:51:41.952-04:00There will be video of the event and you can watch...There will be video of the event and you can watch live online. Visit www.apologeticsevents.com for more details!Abigail@Biolanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-76267819641301847322010-04-21T11:52:45.752-04:002010-04-21T11:52:45.752-04:00Nick, I haven&#39;t seen the roster of the panel b...Nick, I haven&#39;t seen the roster of the panel but I&#39;m told that I will likely not be the only panelist who understands biology. You might be surprised.<br /><br />AMW, I don&#39;t know.<br /><br />Yoda, my favorite Star Wars quote in this context: &quot;Only a Sith deals in absolutes.&quot; While reading the ideas of ID thinkers when they talk about evolution (and especially &quot;Darwinism&quot;) I can think of few better warnings than this one: it&#39;s very hard to find an ID argument that avoids Sith-think.Steve Mathesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05057004085073574659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-62987978393750937612010-04-21T00:28:31.318-04:002010-04-21T00:28:31.318-04:00Nick, since we&#39;re quoting Star Wars, here&#39;...Nick, since we&#39;re quoting Star Wars, here&#39;s one for ya: &quot;Your overconfidence is your weakness.&quot;Yodanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-50533584391674718742010-04-19T21:43:11.536-04:002010-04-19T21:43:11.536-04:00Steve,
Will there be video?Steve,<br /><br />Will there be video?AMWnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-78492292390260929512010-04-19T06:08:44.256-04:002010-04-19T06:08:44.256-04:00Thanks for this post, and to all the commenters, e...Thanks for this post, and to all the commenters, especially RBH, for their work, also.Martin LaBarhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14629053725732957599noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-22923180569835314572010-04-19T03:10:07.879-04:002010-04-19T03:10:07.879-04:00Heh, well, based on that, they&#39;re probably goi...Heh, well, based on that, they&#39;re probably going to helpfully pick your side&#39;s participants for you as well...how helpful. You might get stuck with some new age reporter and some random skeptic with no biology background, each of you given your 15 minutes to try and explain all of evolution and biology and origin of life science to an audience that mostly couldn&#39;t tell you the difference between DNA and proteins. <br /><br />I wouldn&#39;t be that surprised if they brought Flew back for a encore and propped him up like last time, despite his recent change in status.NickMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04765417807335152285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-15990205882516342982010-04-18T21:54:49.268-04:002010-04-18T21:54:49.268-04:00The analysis of the three senses of randomness I d...The analysis of the three senses of randomness I described is not original with me, but I&#39;ll be darned if I can remember when or where I encountered it. It was decades ago, perhaps in the early to mid-1970s because I have the feeling that it was sometime not too long after I started professing, but beyond that my memory is blank.RBHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13562135000111792590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-57508222193376015352010-04-18T21:42:10.914-04:002010-04-18T21:42:10.914-04:00Steve,
Let me know if you need a sycophantic hange...Steve,<br />Let me know if you need a sycophantic hanger-on to accompany you to the event, armed with FlipHD camcorder and a large rubber chicken.<br /><br />Just in case there is trouble.<br /><br />;)John Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18280296574996987228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-74320160479840923792010-04-18T20:44:12.954-04:002010-04-18T20:44:12.954-04:00Hey all, I don&#39;t know anything more about the ...Hey all, I don&#39;t know anything more about the event yet. I&#39;ve heard from one potential panelist and will soon ask for more information. Thanks to Nick and others who&#39;ve emailed me privately to express warnings and concern. I know Meyer is slick and I know the crowd is creationist. I also know how to be charming, and you already know that I know a lot more about genetics, development and evolution than Meyer does. It&#39;s not supposed to be a debate, and I&#39;m sure not approaching it in that light, but I&#39;ll get assurances from my gracious hosts that we are on roughly the same page.<br /><br />RBH, that&#39;s a fantastic summary of randomness vis a vis evolution. I&#39;ll be in touch about turning it into a real post.<br /><br />Dave W., I think you are wrong to assume that radiation is a major source of mutation. Most mutations, I believe, arise from errors in replication and from other sources of damage to DNA. But even if one assumes that &quot;quantum events&quot; are a substantial contributor to genetic diversity, one is not committed to &quot;grand metaphysical&quot; randomness by which I mean the kind of randomness that somehow rules out God&#39;s will or influence.Steve Mathesonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05057004085073574659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-67249255756821288402010-04-18T14:53:37.282-04:002010-04-18T14:53:37.282-04:00RBH,
Oh, good. I started to think, &quot;wait a se...RBH,<br />Oh, good. I started to think, &quot;wait a sec...&quot;<br /><br />:)<br /><br />Nick:<br /><br /><i>Last time (2006 I think) one of the &quot;critics&quot; was Antony Flew, who proceeded to sleep through the event on stage.</i><br /><br />Hilarious!John Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18280296574996987228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-15117683913831599482010-04-18T14:45:36.328-04:002010-04-18T14:45:36.328-04:00Aargh!
&quot;But the important sense for evolutio...Aargh!<br /><br />&quot;But the important sense for evolutionary biology is sense <i><b>3</b></i>.&quot;RBHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13562135000111792590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-14343817912876372562010-04-18T14:42:16.204-04:002010-04-18T14:42:16.204-04:00It happened when they set up the event and before ...It happened when they set up the event and before they invited &quot;powerful&quot; critics. Biola does this kind of thing every couple of years: set up a &quot;debate&quot; with &quot;critics&quot;, get the slick, organized team of ID people up there with some (usually) disorganized hapless scientists/random people vaguely plausibly portrayed to the creationist audience as skeptics, and then discuss things outside the expertise of the participants, and then declare victory when the critics can&#39;t explain the origin of life right there on stage.<br /><br />Last time (2006 I think) one of the &quot;critics&quot; was Antony Flew, who proceeded to sleep through the event on stage.<br /><br />Make sure you watch/listen to the previous events before doing this, so you at least know what you are getting into. To quote Admiral Ackbar, &quot;It&#39;s a trap!&quot;NickMhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04765417807335152285noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-83517796191101924962010-04-18T14:38:39.200-04:002010-04-18T14:38:39.200-04:00There are three senses of &quot;chance&quot; (= ra...There are three senses of &quot;chance&quot; (= random) in play, and there&#39;s a whole lot of slippage across them in discussions of the role of &quot;chance&quot; in biological evolution. They are:<br /><br />1. &#39;Genuine&#39; randomness, which is a characteristic of some quantum processes. Individual events (like which atom will decay next) are <i>in principle</i> unpredictable. The paper and news story linked in the OP describe one such system.<br /><br />2. &#39;Complicated&#39; randomness, in which the causal processes that bring about some event(s) are so complicated we can&#39;t figure them out, even though the event(s) might in principle be wholly deterministic and predictable if we knew everything. As in Steve&#39;s description above, we don&#39;t think they&#39;re uncaused, but they&#39;re so complicated, and perhaps due in part to unknown causal variables, that we can&#39;t predict their occurrence beyond describing the distribution they display and using that to estimate probabilities of occurrence and properties of classes of such events.<br /><br />3. &#39;Relational&#39; randomness, in which two variables have zero mutual information (in the information theoretic sense). Knowing the value of one of the variables tells us nothing about the value of the other. Both variables might be wholly determined and all their causal factors known and still the mutual information between them is zero.<br /><br />The sense of random (= chance) that I take to be relevant when one refers to &quot;random&quot; mutations in evolutionary biology is the third. The statement that &quot;mutations are random&quot; is a statement about the mutual information between the particular mutations that occur and properties of the selective environment, namely that the particular mutations that occur are uncorrelated with (tell us nothing about) the selective environment. (The subset of mutations that are preserved by differential reproductive success in lineages are a quite different story.)<br /><br />Some mutations are also random in sense 1, where the decay of an atom of a radioactive substance emits a particle and/or radiation that zaps a bond in the DNA of a germ cell, thereby altering it. Some (many? most?) are also random in sense 2. But the important sense for evolutionary biology is sense 1.<br /><br />Mutations may be (at least statistically) predictable, in the sense that we know there are mutational hot spots where mutations are more likely to occur: The distribution of mutations across loci is not uniform. But again, that tells us nothing about the selective environment: the mutual information is still zero.<br /><br />In many of these discussions the sense in use shifts from one to another without notice, thereby generating a whole lot of confused verbiage.RBHhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13562135000111792590noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-88384751630446364182010-04-18T14:16:39.102-04:002010-04-18T14:16:39.102-04:00Wait... &quot;powerful&quot; critic? When did tha...Wait... &quot;powerful&quot; critic? When did that happen?toddcwoodhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07913361618341959465noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-55008513224008619542010-04-18T09:42:09.115-04:002010-04-18T09:42:09.115-04:00&quot;But this doesn&#39;t mean that I assume that...&quot;But this doesn&#39;t mean that I assume that the mutations had no cause, or that their occurrence is random in some grand metaphysical sense.&quot;<br /><br />I thought a significant source of biological mutations was due to radiation which in turn is generated by quantum events. My assumption is that quantum events such as the decay of an element is not even in principle predictable although statistical distributions exist. Quantum events can thus be random in a sense that events that occur whose chain of causes are too complex for us to follow are not. <br /><br />Please clarify.<br />Dave Wallacegingorohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11825691766111067082noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-50937311832890485502010-04-18T08:51:06.502-04:002010-04-18T08:51:06.502-04:00Mivart is a fascinating--and in some ways tragic--...Mivart is a fascinating--and in some ways tragic--case of 19th century Catholic reaction to Darwin&#39;s theory. If I recall correctly, his initial opposition to Darwin modified over some years, and much of his work ended up being condemned by the Church. I think Harry Paul discussed his case in detail in his <a href="http://books.google.com/books?id=ym0eAQAACAAJ&amp;source=gbs_slider_thumb" rel="nofollow">1979 book</a>.John Farrellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18280296574996987228noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-54807977166664103862010-04-18T06:31:23.921-04:002010-04-18T06:31:23.921-04:00I think the &#39;Meyer Faces His Critics&#39; even...I think the &#39;Meyer Faces His Critics&#39; event is interesting. Do we know who else is attending? Anyone from Biologos for example? One thing about ID advocates that for me really needs to be pinned down is a clear position on common descent, especially in light of modern genome analysis. I find it hard to see how they can have much to add to a scientific discussion, or even be taken very seriously in a scientific setting, if they refuse to accept the reality of common descent and indeed spend time in futile attempts to argue against it.Bennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4948885059517209129.post-44743481254236914882010-04-18T02:08:44.544-04:002010-04-18T02:08:44.544-04:00From the little that I know of the literature, phi...From the little that I know of the literature, philosophers have been arguing about the distinction between surprising and unsurprising improbable events or observations for quite a while (e.g. in arguments concerning cosmic fine-tuning and anthropic reasoning). I don&#39;t recall seeing Dembski cited in any of those works, I&#39;m sad to say.Alexanderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01908428123363294967noreply@blogger.com